by Jim Nelson
Kyle said the accident had been four weeks earlier. It stood to reason he'd not slept or even seen this room since. He couldn't walk across the den, let alone up the stairs and its rickety handrail. She imagined the bedroom stood preserved as it was the day of the hunting accident. Alice didn't do housework. From the appearance of the kitchen when she first arrived, neither did Henry. She was seeing in this room a kind of afterimage of Kyle just before he was laid up. If so, he was a neat but not fastidious man. No spent towels on the floor, no underwear or socks tossed about. The hamper held a pile of dirty clothes. The sharp tang of mildew wafted up when she lifted the hamper's lid, evidence of wet towels and sweaty socks left for weeks to fester.
Ruby used the toilet and washed her hands. She took the opportunity to wash her face as well. The hot day and a morning of work had left a film of oil on her cheeks and nose. Repeatedly entering and exiting the cold bottom floor for the dismal heat outside had left her feeling vaguely ill. Although there was no air conditioning upstairs, the den where Kyle lay had a swamp cooler installed in a window. It was running full-blast.
It should have felt intrusive to lie in this bed. It should have felt like an ill-defined violation of Kyle's trust, as though he'd allowed her to sleep in the bedroom but not in the bed. Ruby was more than accustomed to sleeping in makeshift furnishings—shelters, Beers Houses, cots, the occasional blankets spread out on a TV room floor. The twin bed she was assigned in Ms. Abney-Rance's household was like a night in the Ritz-Carlton. Not once since she was young did she refuse or question a place to sleep. To survive within the cracks, one learns to set aside the niceties of asking permission twice, the false courtesy of the obligatory Oh no, I couldn't. Just as she'd accepted Benford's money with an illusionist's sleight-of-hand, she'd learned to take offered charity with nothing more than a Thanks in return.
Gently, she peeled back a corner of the bed covers. Beneath the comforter was a thin blanket of gray wool. She peeled it back as well. She guessed she was on the side of the bed he slept on. The nightstand on this side had an alarm clock and a copy of the Bible beside the reading light. The opposite nightstand was barren save for a framed photograph she could not make out in the light.
She reached the bed sheets. She removed her jeans and nurse's top Dr. Benford had bought her. Digging through her backpack, she found an old man's undershirt several sizes too large for her emaciated frame. Its thin material fell loosely on her, its bottom hem almost reaching her knees. She crawled under the blankets and sheets. She'd guessed correctly. Even after four weeks, she could still smell the lingering well-preserved odor of man in the sheets and pillow: oak, spices, musk, sweat.
A delicious tingling sensation rose up her legs and into her chest. It was the shiver of a fresh bed, cold but clean. It was the shivers of a snug, comfortable place of one's own. No matter how cheaply built, each room of the house was comforting and lived-in. It was a house built on the cheap but furnished from the heart, not the house of an endless bank account of oil money or high-tech stock options.
The tingling swirled about her legs and chest and cocooned her. It was in her nostrils, it was in her hair, it was hugging her. She stretched out under the sheets and took a long, relieving sigh. Moments later, she was asleep.
Thirty
She woke with alarm. Even with the curtains drawn, she knew it was dusk outside. She'd only meant to sleep for an hour or two. She bounded from the bed, blinking to get herself awake. She dressed in a mad rush and hurried down the stairs and into the den.
"There you are," Kyle said. He was watching television. "I thought you'd come to your senses and gotten out of Dodge when the getting was good."
Still fog-headed, she couldn't make sense of him. "I'm sorry?"
"I thought you'd realized what a mistake you'd made."
"No!" She straightened her shirt and hitched up her jeans and flattened her bed hair. "No, I'm here. I was upstairs—"
"Relax. Everything's fine.” He pointed to the set with the remote in his hand. "Did you see about this?"
The local evening news was broadcasting video of the CHP car on its side in flames.
"We were there!" Ruby pointed. "We saw that when we crossed the border."
"You must've just missed the shootout, then," he said. "Seems the California patrol sped around the border gate without stopping. There was some gunfire. He swerved and spun the car around and it flipped."
The news broadcast continued. The governor of Jefferson spoke on the steps outside the new governor's mansion in Redding. He stood before a phalanx of TV cameras and microphones. She listened intently for him to explain what had happened. She could not decode anything meaningful from his platitudes about freedom and sovereignty. The news broadcast quoted a statement from California's governor teletype-style across the screen, two sentences separated by an ellipsis. It too was a platitude about rule of law and cooperation between the states.
"Why did it happen?" Ruby said. "He had to have a reason."
"They're claiming one of our volunteer militia had crossed onto California soil," Kyle said. "They're saying the militia boys were shooting at the highway patrolman from their truck. He chased them into Jefferson. He should've stopped at the border, but instead, he drove around the blockade." Kyle shook his head at the television, as though disapproving of what he was hearing. "So they opened fire."
"Is he dead?"
"If he'd obeyed the law—"
"I'm asking if he was killed," Ruby said.
Kyle's head twisted around. Ruby knew when she was being spoken down to. She could smell it before he started doing it. She had a good nose for these things. She would put up with it when it served a necessary goal, such as working for Ms. Abney-Rance or cleaning toilets for six bucks an hour in Venice Beach.
"He's dead, alright," Kyle said. "You being from California's not going to be a problem, is it?" The Jefferson state flag hung lopsided from the wall beyond him.
"No," she said.
"We fought hard for our sovereignty," he said. "This state's important to me."
He spoke as though he'd borne arms for the cause. As far as Ruby's understanding of recent history went, she did not recall the separation requiring any bullets fired or bloodshed. Jefferson's detachment from California was made possible at the ballot box, through the courts, and by an oddball parliamentary tactic pulled off in California's Senate that permitted the division without actually approving it.
"I'm here to help you and to help Henry." She nodded at the wall clock. "Shouldn't he be home by now?" She panicked a bit. "Was I supposed to pick him up at school?"
"He's upstairs. He's doing his homework."
"Where's his school?" The list of duties and responsibilities she was putting on herself kept multiplying. "Should I be dropping him off in the morning?"
"The school sends a bus around. But there might come the day where you need to drive him. It would be a big help if you could do that."
"I'm happy to. Did he eat yet?"
"He grabbed something in town."
"What?"
"Tacos, I think."
Shaking her head to scold herself, she said, "I'll make him dinner."
"That would be a big help too."
She began toward the kitchen door. She caught herself halfway inside.
"You haven't eaten either," she said.
"He brought me a chicken taco." A fast food sack crumpled to a ball was on the table beside his meds and bandages.
"Ok," she said, collecting her thoughts. "Ok." A mental to-do list was forming. "I'll make dinner." Once again, she caught herself before entering the kitchen. "What about you? Do I need to help you with something?"
"Alice will be here in thirty minutes."
Under the blankets, his colostomy bag gurgled. He put a hand on it to silence it. It continued to burble. "One of those days," he said as way of explanation.
Thirty-one
"Folsom Women's Facility. This call is monitored and recorded."
"I'd like to schedule a telephone call with Hanna Driscoll." Ruby spelled the last name for the woman on the line and recited her mother's inmate identification number.
The line was quiet for some time. Hanna could hear the clicking of a computer keyboard through the phone's earpiece. She did not expect the law to have changed since she made the phone call from the Abneys' house in Pismo Beach. She would keep trying, though. Living as she had so far, she knew the most effective strategy against a stodgy bureaucracy was the numbing persistence of asking, asking, and asking some more. Different woman on the phone, different day of the year—maybe she'd had a second cup of coffee that morning and was feeling generous, or perhaps some subtlety about the new law had been clarified to the prison staff that permitted limited communication with inmates like her mother.
"Are you her legal representative?" the woman asked.
"No."
"No communication is permitted with inmates classified AIP. New law."
"If I hire a legal representative for her, how would they reach her?"
The woman on the line listed a recipe of obtaining the correct forms, having them signed by the attorney of record and notarized, mailing them in for the inmate to countersign, and then waiting four to six weeks for the state's approval.
"When you say 'no communication,' does that include—"
"No phone, no email, no letters," the woman rattled off.
"Not even gifts?"
"No packages of any kind."
Ruby, heated, snapped, "What kind of a place are you running there?"
"Folsom is in Jefferson now," the woman said emotionlessly. "We do things different."
Thirty-two
The capabilities of the pantry's supplies were being stretched thin. Using a pad of paper and a pencil from a Mason jar of scissors and pens and rulers, she began transferring her mental to-do list to a sheet.
So busy with dinner and washing more of the dishes, Alice came and left without a chance for Ruby to watch her routine. She promised herself she would stick with Alice when she returned in the morning.
Henry ate dinner at the kitchen table, but only after Ruby forbade him to take his plate upstairs to his bedroom. Ruby carried Kyle's dinner to him on a tray. He thanked her for the meal and again complimented her cooking. She'd made the last of the instant white rice and topped it with supermarket-brands of canned refried beans and canned peas. She accepted his compliments, feeling they were offered out of politeness. This is bachelor food, she reminded herself as he devoured the meal with relish. Still—his manners were unlike any she'd encountered in Southern California, a place where courtesy was slowing the car to let a pedestrian cross.
When she returned to the kitchen, Henry was at the stove dishing up seconds. "I left you some," he said.
"Please finish it," she said. "I already ate," she lied.
He shrugged. "Okay." The serving spoon rattled against the sides of the pots as he cleaned them out.
Ruby joined him at the table. She crossed her hands, one over the other, and spoke while he scooped up mounds of food with a fork. She had so much she wanted to tell him—she was overflowing with history and revelations—but she held back temptation.
"How was school today?" she asked.
He shrugged. "Okay," he said with a full mouth.
She wanted to stroke his head and give him a deep, full hug. Little Henry was crying when Cynthia died. He was four minutes old when his bridge mother expired. Cynthia's last moments were hearing the wails of the child she'd carried since she was born. She couldn't even see Henry, as bridge daughters are moved off to a separate darkened room to die. Ruby could not imagine the strength Cynthia possessed. Cynthia was fortitude. Cynthia would have been here for Henry too. She would power through any blockade to be with Henry.
"What classes are you taking?" she asked him.
"Wood shop. Archery."
"That's nice. How do you like them?"
He shrugged, eating noisily.
"Have you done it before?"
"Dad's taken me bow hunting a lot of times."
"Bow hunting?" She was asking about wood shop. "You mean, you go hunting using bows and arrows?"
His shrug this time was more pronounced. What else could "bow hunting" mean?
"How often do you go hunting?" Ruby asked.
"With a bow?"
"Yes."
He stopped eating to count in his head. "Five or six times."
That relieved and alarmed her. Aside from Henry being told by his father it was okay to hurt animals, she was opposed to the idea of Henry engaging in something so dangerous on a regular basis. She would speak with Kyle. Henry had gone six times, certainly that was enough for a boy his age. Like smoking cigarettes. She calmly told herself he'd tried it, it was out of his system, and now he did not need to try it again.
"Regular hunting, though," Henry said. "That's different."
"Regular hunting?" Ruby said, voice cracking. "You mean, with a gun?"
"A rifle," Henry said. "Or shotgun. When we're hunting quail."
Ruby reflexively pushed away from the table. "He gives you a gun?" She was animated.
"A rifle," Henry said.
"Do you shoot it?"
He shrugged, staring at her, mouth full but not chewing.
Livid, she rose to her feet. "Your father lets you shoot guns."
Henry, full mouth loose, nodded.
Ruby flew to the den, propelled by an instinct she'd harbored since holding Henry in her arms sixteen years earlier. The instinct had brewed and bubbled deep within her, dark and untapped like an ancient reservoir now gushing to the surface.
"Henry told me he goes hunting with you," she said to Kyle.
Kyle's half-finished meal cooled off to one side. He'd pushed away the wheeled table and pulled up his gown. His colostomy bag had inflated with gas. He was releasing it into the air via a small flap on one end normally sealed with a clip. The stench made the room smell ripe.
Ruby did not care. "He's only sixteen," she said. "Are you insane? Do you know how dangerous guns are?"
With the bag in his hand hissing like a punctured bike tire, he gaped up at her. "I'm fully aware of what a gun is capable of doing." Bandages and gauze edged with blood covered his belly and upper leg like a crazy crossword filled in with red ink.
"So you've learned your lesson?"
"Woman—" He clipped his bag and pulled down his gown. "What happened to me was a grave mistake, but don't take it out on the boy, and dammit all, don't take it out on me."
She was about to burst. She was ready to cry with anger.
"I thought you were a good father," she said. "I believed in you."
He withdrew as though a bad taste had just flooded his mouth. "I'll let God judge if I'm a fit father. I try, and I've tried for sixteen years. We raised him to be respectful to others. We've taught him responsibility and self-reliance as best we knew." He grimaced down upon his legs beneath the covers. They sizzled and ached. "His mother deserves the credit. I can only say I've tried to follow her lead."
"Did she know you were taking him hunting? Did she approve?"
"Of course she did," he roared. "Why wouldn't she?"
Every sentiment he uttered was foreign to her, spoken in the language of another land. She understood Kyle's words, he spoke English all right, but the arrangement of those words into sentences seemed incredible. The only moment the two of them harmonized was when he admitted his dead wife had taken the lead raising Henry. For a spark of a moment, Ruby sympathized. Then he said she had approved of him handling a gun. Simply incredible.
Attempting to keep her cool, she said, "Are there any guns in the house?"
"Of course," he said, voice still a touch under a roar.
"Where are they?"
"Under the bed."
"Which bed?"
"My bed upstairs."
The bed she'd just slept in—the warmth and comfort of her extended nap now seemed a cruel joke.
"How many guns?"
"Five," he said.
"Five?" Who in good god almighty needs five guns?
"A thirty-aught-six, a twenty-two, a thirty-two millimeter, and two shotties," he counted off. "They're locked in cases."
"Locked," she said, a touch relieved. "Where's the key?"
He reached to the table beside the bed. He held up a ring of keys. "Always at my side."
"Henry can get to those when you're sleeping."
"He's not going to do that," Kyle said. "I know you're new here, but you'll learn soon enough. He's a good kid."
She glared at the key ring and at Kyle. The world had gone mirror-like the moment she crossed into Jefferson. She was here for Henry. She had to find a way to make peace with this. She was here for Henry.
She was also here to care for Kyle. It was a package deal she'd agreed to. Caring for Kyle was ensuring Henry's future. Storming into here riling up a man bedridden from a gunshot wound was not caring for him.
"I'm sorry I raised my voice," she said.
"Me too." His voice remained scratched and gruff.
"I've never lived in a house with guns." She rarely lived in a house. The Abneys certainly did not own a gun. She knew for certain. She'd cleaned every square inch of their home, and more than once.
"I'm wagering you've never handled a gun," he said.
"That's right."
"You know I'm a professional hunter."
Ruby was taken aback. "No one told me that." It explained the photos on the walls in the front room.
"I lead hunting trips up in the hills and around Yosemite," he said. "In season, I pick up work with the state game and wildlife board."
"Doing what?" she asked.
"Thinning populations," he said. "I used to work for California. Now I work for Jefferson. Well—" He made a disgusted noise and a futile motion toward his leg. "Now I work for no one." He made another disgusted noise, one of futility. "I may never hunt again."
Now sour at her own behavior, Ruby put a check on her attitude. She straightened his pillow and pulled up his blankets, which he'd tossed at his feet to deal with his colostomy bag. She wheeled the table in front of him to finish his meal. While he ate, she refilled his plastic water bottle in the bathroom sink. She added cubes of ice from the kitchen freezer. When she entered the kitchen, Henry watched her from the table, eyes wide, fork hovering over his empty dirty plate. She imagined he'd been at the door during their argument and raced back to the table when she approached.